I think the greek god's and titans will be proud of ZEUS (when its done ofcourse)

And this rig will be the ruler of them all ( the oder god's and titans that is )
And he will rule over all your storage and he will keept it safe at all costs
( this picture is from age of empires ( the nostalgia ))

And he will rule over all your storage and he will keept it safe at all costs

He bloody well better, it was expensive enough.
Although I did buy the RE4's right before the Thailand floods, so the prices I got for them
were actually lower than current ones for their successor (or the RE4 itself, which is still
sold here). But still, enterprise drives cost a #%[email protected]!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sir-Weasel

( this picture is from age of empires ( the nostalgia ))

Oh yes, the nostalgia. I only ever got to play the demo for various reasons, but even with that
I had tons of fun. Might have to go play the high-def version if I get the time over summer.

That's a pretty overpowered HTPC, in CPU terms anyway. The one I put together recently for example was based around an AMD A4-5300 in comparison.

Yes it is indeed. That's because I will be running BOINC on it (or maybe [email protected]), so the computing
power will not go to waste (it's also the main reason for the custom water loop, not really
needed for a "reasonable" HTPC or server setup ).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zoot

What OS are you planning on using?

Probably Arch Linux. I've had pretty good experiences with their VPN setup guide and suite.
And since I've been using the O/S for about two years now I'm pretty familiar and comfortable
with it. Interestingly, despite the constant warnings about cutting edge software and the
stability of rolling release distros (another thing I like about Arch, much more suited to my
preferences than fixed release styles, but that's really just a matter of personal taste for me),
I have in those two years only once had an update bork up a machine so that I had to
reinstall (or rather: reinstallation was the quickest way to solve the problem as opposed to
hours of trying to fix it other ways).

This machine will also serve as our VPN server for personal stuff and business for my dad's
and my own data (well, my backups and his main data repository). My dad is self-employed
and often works from clients' offices or his g/f's apartment, so having access to one
centralized data repository without having to constantly sync between his laptop and his
desktop(s) should make his life considerably easier.

And for me it will be mostly about having a backup repository of my data.

I will probably use SSHFS to mount the server's drives and partitions on my own machine.
It's really convenient and a lot easier to set up than NFS, for example. And since it's very
easy to use there's a lot fewer possibilities to make mistakes with regards to security,
which with me not being an expert is also a big plus.

If I get really adventurous, I might use FreeBSD, with which I've been experimenting since
last fall. The main advantage of that would be ZFS, which is absolutely awesome (especially
for a server). I'm nowhere near to being able to really utilize its potential, but even with the
little I've learnt about it so far it's already rather magnificent. Main drawback: SSHFS has
a bug which produces a segfault after a very short while (as of last month), so I could not
use that, and I haven't been able to get NFS to reliably work between my Linux machines
and FreeBSD yet, so that would be a major source of headaches.

I know that you can use ZFS with Linux, but those solutions just don't seem stable enough
yet, and I really don't feel like putting my dad's business data in the hands of beta software
(nor my own, to be hones).

I will probably first install FreeBSD and see if I can get the VPN stuff to work as easily as
with Arch, then check how SSHFS behaves. If all is good, I'll probably start converting my
ext4 Linux HDD's into a nice ZFS pool, because ZFS would be really nice for a server, with
it being able to take snapshots of your FS and stuff.

If it doesn't work, I'll install Arch. The only thing I'd really miss is ZFS, and it's not like ext4
hasn't been working for me (although ZFS would be really nice ).

For those who are into this sort of thing, the software side of this build will probably turn
out more interesting than the hardware stuff tbh.

Operating systems (especially the UNIX kind) are just something I'm interested in, and if
you're willing to invest some time to read up on stuff there's some pretty awesome things
you can do with/on them.

But I'm aware this isn't everybody's cup of tea, and I think that's perfectly ok

Yes it is indeed. That's because I will be running BOINC on it (or maybe [email protected]), so the computing
power will not go to waste (it's also the main reason for the custom water loop, not really
needed for a "reasonable" HTPC or server setup ).

Even then the water cooling is probably overkill.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpenwasser

Probably Arch Linux. I've had pretty good experiences with their VPN setup guide and suite. And since I've been using the O/S for about two years now I'm pretty familiar and comfortable with it. Interestingly, despite the constant warnings about cutting edge software and the stability of rolling release distros (another thing I like about Arch, much more suited to my preferences than fixed release styles, but that's really just a matter of personal taste for me).

Out of curiousity, would Arch be a "bit bleeding" edge for a server? Would you be better off with something like CentOS or my friend - Debian Stable?

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpenwasser

If I get really adventurous, I might use FreeBSD, with which I've been experimenting since last fall.

I haven't ever tried FreeBSD. Although I see Debian has a branch with the FreeBSD kernel. It might be an OS to tinker with on my AMD Sempron 2600+ system which is currently running Debian Squeeze as a Torrentslave.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpenwasser

For those who are into this sort of thing, the software side of this build will probably turn
out more interesting than the hardware stuff tbh.

I've actually run this CPU with this radiator in my previous rig (link), and for an overclocked
2600k it's a pretty good fit IMO. Also, keep in mind that since this will also be an HTPC,
low noise is desirable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zoot

Out of curiousity, would Arch be a "bit bleeding" edge for a server? Would you be better off with something like CentOS or my friend - Debian Stable?

Aaah, I see what you're trying to do here

Tbh, if I was an IT professional and setting this up for a client I would probably not use Arch,
but I've decided to give it a shot since

I'll be around to more or less quickly resolve any troubles,

besides that one screwup (which was related to Gnome, which I'm no longer running ),
I've actually never had any issues with Arch's stability or reliability.

But indeed, your suggestion does not actually sound unreasonable, if I don't run FreeBSD
I might actually have a look at that, so thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zoot

I haven't ever tried FreeBSD. Although I see Debian has a branch with the FreeBSD kernel.

Yes it does indeed . There's also an ArchBSD project which has recently sprung up and
uses Arch's package manager (which is pretty awesome IMO), though I don't think I'll be
using that for this machine. Maybe for HELIOS. The biggest plus for ArchBSD for me would
be that it's also rolling release.

Originally I gave FreeBSD a shot for a few reasons, the more important ones being:

I had been reading up on the history of Linux, UNIX and all their relatives and since FreeBSD
is generally considered to be a true genetic Unix (whereas GNU/Linux is merely Unix-like
in its behavior, but has an original code base of its own) I was just curious about what the
differences between a true Unix and Linux are and how they translate to user experience.

I was also doing some reading on file systems at the time and stumbled upon ZFS. After
watching several hours' worth of youtube videos on it, I just had to give it a try.

FreeBSD being used as a foundation for other devices (the PS3's operating system for
example IIRC) piqued my interest as well.

Quite a few debates have been fought over whether Linux' rather anarchistic approach to
things is superior over FreeBSD's more focused project leading philosophy. I wanted to see
if that could even be noticed by a non-expert end user. So far I can't say that I have, besides
maybe with regards to documentation, tutorials and community culture, but not in actual
O/S or application user experience.

I wanted to broaden my horizons.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zoot

It might be an OS to tinker with on my AMD Sempron 2600+ system which is currently running Debian Squeeze as a Torrentslave.

If you do give it a shot, there are quite a few tutorials on youtube on it which helped me
with first installation. Driver support actually seems to be pretty good. WiFi, sound etc.
worked out of the box for my laptop (a Dell XT2).

But there are quite a few fine differences when it comes to configuration (config files as
well as config tools), and I have to admit that I don't yet feel really comfortable in FreeBSD.

The biggest difference is probably the portage tree, how you manage your system and
keep everything up to date. On the one hand, it's rather Gentoo-like since you usually
compile most applications (besides the core O/S on first install, but that too can be
re-compiled from source after installation), which is pretty cool. Though technically I suppose
it's the other way around, with Gentoo being inspired by the whole portage tree thing. On
the other hand, I have not yet managed to achieve a clean and smooth full-system update
process that's as easy as simply entering "pacman -Syu"; the process is quite a bit more
involved (understandable if you have to recompile most of your binaries on your machine
of course).

But even if I don't go with FreeBSD for now, the sheer awesomeness of ZFS and my technical
curiosity will probably drive me to further experiment with FreeBSD in the long run.

I've actually run this CPU with this radiator in my previous rig (link), and for an overclocked
2600k it's a pretty good fit IMO. Also, keep in mind that since this will also be an HTPC,
low noise is desirable.

I hear you about low noise.

For instance I was hoping to get by with the AMD stock cooler for the APU based HTPC I built, but I had to plop my old Akasa Evo into it instead as the cooler was just too loud, plus the board insisted on running the fan full tilt all the time. Can't complain though, it was only €40.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpenwasser

Aaah, I see what you're trying to do here

I'm quite the Debian fan, just in case you hadn't noticed.

Although I wouldn't be of the opinion that *everybody* else should use it though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpenwasser

But even if I don't go with FreeBSD for now, the sheer awesomeness of ZFS and my technical
curiosity will probably drive me to further experiment with FreeBSD in the long run.

I'll have to admit I know nothing about ZFS. The buzz was all about BTRFS the last time I was au fait with all the Linux/Unix file systems. I'm still rocking EXT3 for instance.